So warns minister and lawyer Melvin Otey in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 5-4 decision legalizing same-sex marriage.

Despite declarations of support for religious freedom by President Barack Obama and the high court’s majority, Christians “definitely should be concerned,” Otey said.

“I believe churches and Christian institutions will be significantly affected by the larger movement that has ushered in the acceptance of same-sex unions,” said the former U.S. Justice Department attorney, now an associate professor of law at Faulkner University in Montgomery, Ala.

“It is at least possible that churches and organizations that speak against homosexuality, for example, will lose their tax-exempt status because the exemption is a benefit bestowed by the government,” added Otey, who preached for the Georgia Avenue Church of Christ in Washington, D.C., for eight years.

For members of Churches of Christ — most of whom believe God ordained marriage as a sacred union between one man and one woman — the ruling has sparked myriad questions and concerns:

This story appears in the August 2015 print edition of The Christian Chronicle.

Brady, 22, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in preaching ministry. He’s pursuing a master of divinity degree at Oklahoma Christian while working with the youth ministry at the Edmond Church of Christ.

Mary, 21, is majoring in family studies/child development with a minor in Bible. She’s a member of Oklahoma Christian’s Summer Singers, a group of seven that performs at camps, youth rallies and other special events.

On their first date, Brady and Mary ate pizza, shared hopes and dreams and — as their wedding planning website describes it — “gazed into each other’s eyes.”

Their first kiss came later.

This column appears in the August 2015 print edition of The Christian Chronicle.

About 10 years ago, Hawes and her colleague Doug Pardue proposed creating the Post and Courier’s Faith & Values section “because religion and values-based coverage was so important to our readership, yet we weren’t writing about it as much as needed,” she recalled.

“I covered religion on and off after that until joining our projects teams about six months ago,” Hawes told GetReligion. “The beat was one of the most difficult and rewarding ones I have tackled because people care so much about it, yet for that reason I dealt with some extremely thin-skinned people who really struggled to understand why we would present faiths and views that weren’t ‘right’ in their minds.

“It honestly made me question my own faith at times to see how human the church is with infighting and backstabbing,” added Hawes, a former winner of the Religion Newswriters Association’s Cornell Reporter of the Year Award and a finalist again this year. “On the other side, I also met the most incredibly inspirational people of faith in our community who demonstrated the beauty of the human spirit and the strength of what faith could achieve.”

Walking (with God) in Memphis (reporting from Memphis, Tenn.): In the nation’s poorest metro area, a Christian ministry trains former inmates to succeed at work — and life.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — In a room at the Midtown Church of Christ, a dozen men bow to pray each weekday morning.

Then they drop to the ground and do 10 to 15 pushups.

“It’s just something I added to relieve a little physical stress,” teacher Antonio Owens — known to his students as “Tough Love Tony” — said of the exercise regimen.

These men — most convicted felons who spent years behind bars — know a little something about stress, as do the women studying down the hall with senior teacher and counselor Laura Harrison.

“I’m trying to get myself headed in a brand-new direction,” said Joshua Banks, a repeat offender who served nine years in prison. “I know I can’t start over, but I can make this a new beginning.”

Banks credits his chance for a new beginning to HopeWorks, a Memphis job-training ministry associated with Churches of Christ.

The program, which traces its roots to Christians who came together in the late 1980s to fight homelessness, has graduated more than 1,000 students since 1998.

HopeWorks’ success in helping former inmates was highlighted during the recent 42nd annual National Jail and Prison Ministry Workshop, hosted by the Highland Church of Christ in Cordova, Tenn., east of Memphis.